Illustrated book from 9/11 report

NEW YORK — The bestselling report by the commission that examined the Sept. 11 attacks is being adapted into a graphic book, which the publisher hopes will widen the audience for the panel's findings.

"The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation" will be published in September.

The independent bipartisan panel, informally known as the Sept. 11 commission, prepared an account of the 2001 attacks and made recommendations on guarding against future attacks.

The graphic book cuts the panel's more than 500-page report down to 144 pages of stark comic-book-style images depicting the sequence of events for each of the four hijacked planes, according to a partial advance copy of the Farrar, Straus & Giroux book obtained by Reuters.

In one depiction of the events on United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, passengers are seen bloodied and battling knife-wielding hijackers. "We've got to stop them! Two planes crashed into the World Trade Center," one passenger says, about to land a punch on a hijacker who has stabbed a passenger in the back with a knife. In another panel, a passenger calls his father just before the second plane crashes into the World Trade Center: "It's getting bad, Dad.... A stewardess was stabbed ... they seem to have knives and Mace. I think we're going down ... my God, my God .... "

The book was edited by Sid Jacobson, who created the Richie Rich comic series, and illustrated by Ernie Colon, who worked on comics including Spider-Man and Green Lantern.